Facebook Extends Event Time-Zone Support To App Developers

Facebook is extending the time-zone support for eventsit announced in March, as well as the ability to create them with only a date and no start and end times, to its developer application-programming interfaces.

Facebook is extending the time-zone support for eventsit announced in March, as well as the ability to create them with only a date and no start and end times, to its developer application-programming interfaces.

The events feature has undergone several renovations of late, including a complete redesign last month that allowed users to view their events in either a calendar or list format.

Until recently, there was no good way to specify an event happening in a different time zone. Facebook events used to be time-zone-independent, meaning people would specify a date and time for their event (e.g., July 4, 2012, at 7 p.m.), and this would render identically to everyone, regardless of what time zone they were in. It was up to the person to infer what time the event actually started based on where it took place. This was problematic for friends who wanted to enjoy live events together, such as sporting events, which may start at 6:30 p.m. ET but 3:30 p.m. PT.

Starting today, the following changes will be made to our platform APIs to support event time zones. Any apps created as of today will automatically get time-zone support. Existing apps may opt in to time-zone support by going to the app dashboard (http://developers.facebook.com/apps), clicking on settings > advanced, and changing the “events time zone” migration field to “enabled.” This is a 90-day breaking change; time-zone support will be added to all apps in 90 days.